Falling (Fading Series) (46 page)

Pulling away from the water, I find a spot back by the sea oats that’s already set up for a fire. I pull the jeep up the beach and park.

“You wanna grab the blankets?” I ask as we get out of the car.

I open the back hatch and pull out the firewood to start a fire while Candace bundles up. Once I have the fire going, I sit next to her, wrapping the blankets around the both of us as she cuddles into me.

“I had fun at Tori’s this morning,” she says as she clutches the blanket to her. “She’s really nice.”

“Yeah, she is.”

“So her mom is Donna’s sister?”

“Uh huh.”

She laughs quietly, saying, “It’s hard to keep it straight.”

“It’s my mom and her two sisters. And then all my cousins are girls as well,” I explain. “Tori and I always linked up because of our age, and she’s really into surfing too, so we get together a lot to hit the beach.”

When the wind kicks up, she turns her head and rests it on my chest. “I was wondering something.”

“What’s that?”

“If that’s the house you grew up in, why does your mom still live there?”

“I don’t know. I asked her that not too long ago,” I tell her. “She told me that she loves the house and that she chooses to remember all the good memories we had there.”

“What about you?” she asks as she looks up at me.

Adjusting to pull her between my legs, I lean back against the log lying behind me before answering her. “It’s hard for me to remember anything good. Being in that house is sometimes hard on me. I’ll see things that remind me of a particular beating and stuff like that, and it dredges up a lot of shit for me.”

She lets go of the blanket and wraps her arms around me, asking, “Why did she stay?”

“Honestly . . . I never asked her. Now that I’m older, I would just assume that she was scared. Worried about how she would support the two of us if she did leave.”

She doesn’t say anything, just leans into me as we hold on to each other. I stare into the fire when I continue to talk and explain, “My dad was a frightening man. I was terrified of him. Scared he was going to kill my mom one day. He would drink heavily and lose control. You never knew how far he would go. I used to sit and watch him beat her, scared if I left that he might go too far and I wouldn’t be able to help her.”

“So you watched?” she asks, horrified.

“I couldn’t say anything because every time I would scream for him to stop, he would just go harder on her, making it worse.”

“I can’t even imagine. But what about you?”

“He hated me, Candace. At least with my mom, he had once loved her. But never me. He didn’t give a shit what he did to me. I was always walking around in pain. Broken ribs, concussions. That’s mostly why I started using X. It just felt good.”

She looks at me, and I watch her eyes puddle with tears that don’t fall.

“And nobody ever knew? Nobody helped you?” she questions.

“The only other person who knows, beside me and my mom, is you.”

“No one in your family?”

“Only you,” I tell her.

“Does Donna know that I know?”

“No.”

She shifts to her knees and faces me. I know she doesn’t know how to respond to everything I just laid on her, so I take away the pressure when I hold her face and kiss her. She grips my wrists with her hands, and I keep my eyes open as I watch her tears finally fall.

I pull back and wipe her cheeks before I lie us down on the pile of blankets in the sand, the only heat from her and the fire. I’ve never unloaded this weight that I’ve been carrying for years the way she allows me to.

“You’re the strongest person I know,” she whispers against my neck.

“I’m not.”

“You are.”

“Before I met you, I hid everything. I was selfish and used people. I was weak.”

“But you’re not now. I don’t see any of that in you,” she says, and I know the only reason for that is her.

After a few more days, it’s time to head back to Seattle. I’m finishing packing our bags while Candace gets ready in the bathroom. Having this week away has been good for us. And having her here with my mom makes this connection that we have so much stronger.

Needing to grab a few things out of the bathroom, I don’t knock when I see she has left the door cracked. When I open it, she startles as she pulls down on her sweatshirt.

“What are you doing?”

“Nothing,” she says as she still has her top clutched in her hands.

I walk over to her and take her hand, lifting it up along with the shirt, and when I do, she says, “I don’t like it,” referring to her tattoo that is peeking over her pants that she has tugged down.

I lower her shirt and ask, “Why?”

“Because it’s not me,” she admits. “I was trying to be someone different, and it only led to bad things.”

“What do you mean?”

“I got it in a moment of rebellion, I guess. It was stupid, really. I got it and started acting foolishly, which led to . . . umm . . .” her words stammer off as she drops her head away from me. I know what she’s trying to say, and it’s insane to think getting a tattoo would result in her getting raped.

“I get it. But, babe, nothing you did led to that.”

When she doesn’t say anything and refrains from looking at me as she starts walking out of the bathroom, I grab ahold of her because I need to know that she agrees with me.

“Wait. You know that, right?”

God. She doesn’t agree with me. I can see the guilt in her eyes. How could she possibly think this?

“Come here,” I tell her as I sit on the bed, taking her hand and pulling her towards me. “Tell me you don’t think that.”

When she doesn’t respond, I say, “Babe, there is nothing you could have possibly done to deserve that.”

She turns away from me as I say this, and when I tug her back to me, she’s crying.

Fuck.

How did I not know that she blames herself for this?

“Shit, babe. I had no idea this is how you feel.”

“Please, don’t,” she says in a broken voice.

“I need you to talk to me about this. You have it all wrong. What that guy did was fucked up, babe, and you didn’t do shit to deserve what he did to you.”

She looks up at me and pulls her hands out of mine when she gets mad and yells, “You don’t get it, Ryan! What I did was stupid, and I completely led him on. It wasn’t right, and I knew it, but I did it anyway.”

Infuriated that she feels this way when her logic is so fucked up, I raise my voice at her, saying, “What the fuck could you have possibly done? Because I know you, Candace, and I know you couldn’t have led him on that much. But that shit doesn’t even matter because you could’ve stripped down in front of him, and you still didn’t deserve to be raped.”

“Don’t say that fucking word, Ryan!” she snaps and then begins to fall apart, sobbing.

Banding my arms around her, I hold her close. “Babe, I’m sorry. I just had no idea that this is how you think.”

“I didn’t even really like him,” she begins to stammer out between her cries. “But I was stupid and lonely, so I would let him kiss me, knowing that I didn’t like him. And I fucking hate my mother for this, because if it wasn’t for her being such a bitch, I never would have gone out with him.”

“Candace, please don’t do this.”

“You just don’t get it. I did lead him on, and I pissed him off. I never should’ve acted like that. I should’ve just been honest.”

“This isn’t your fault.” I tell her in a hard voice.

“Yes, it is!”

“It isn’t your fault, Candace.”

Facing me, she takes my shirt in her hands, fisting the fabric when she yells, “But it is!” and then falls into my chest. Her cries are loud, staggered, and strained. It’s hard to listen to, but I do because I love her. I don’t say anything else because I’m only upsetting her worse.

I can’t argue her irrational thinking because she isn’t seeing it with clear eyes. This guy screwed with her head so badly that she’s been carrying the weight of the responsibility on her own shoulders. And here I am, blind to this fact. My girl has been holding fault when that son of a bitch is the only one to blame.

Moving her with me as I lie down on the bed, she tucks her head under my chin and continues to cry for a while. She’s in so much pain, and I don’t know how to make it any better for her. I’ve always questioned her choices for how she’s been dealing with this, but now, knowing this piece of the puzzle, it’s clear that she needs to do something.

We’re face to face when she finally speaks. “It’s been seven months, Ryan.”

“I know, babe.”

“I just want it to go away.”

“I know. But it’s never going to get easier if you keep blaming yourself. It kills me that you feel this way. It fuckin’ kills me that I can’t take this away from you.”

Knowing that there isn’t a goddamn thing I can do to lessen her misery frustrates me beyond anything I have ever dealt with. I want to take care of her, to be the person that makes this better for her, but that’s what’s so fucked up about this situation—that’s what’s so scary—because it all lies within her. She’s the only one who can make this better, but she refuses to help herself. She figures if she just ignores it for long enough then it will fade away and everything will go back to normal. It’s not a sane way to deal with this. In fact, I think it’s just making it worse for her with every day that passes. The avoiding is catching up with her, and I’m afraid she’s just going to—one day—crumble.

When her breathing begins to even out, she asks, “Can’t we stay another night?”

“Anything you want,” I tell her.

I lie here, and I can’t shake my own guilt about this whole situation. I’ve always had it. I’ve always asked all the what-ifs, but the fact remains, this girl was outside fighting for her life while I was mere feet away. If only I would have gone out there, I wouldn’t be lying here with my girl falling apart on me. She wouldn’t be carrying this around with her every day. I was the only other person there, and I did nothing.

Noticing that her body has gone limp, I remember that she hasn’t taken her sleeping pill. Slipping out of bed, I go to her purse to grab the bottle. I take out a pill and fill up a glass of water from the bathroom before waking her.

“Baby,” I urge as she slowly opens her eyes. “Here, take this.”

She does and then hands the glass back to me. I crawl back into bed and hold her until she falls back asleep. The whole time, my mind is just eating away at me. At everything. When she’s finally asleep, I quietly head downstairs because I need a little space to get my thoughts together, but shit is just spinning more and more the longer I sit at the dining room table.

“Hey, dear,” I hear my mom say softly when she crosses the room to sit with me.

“Hey,” I sigh.

“Where’s Candace?”

“She’s sleeping. We’re just gonna head back tomorrow,” I tell her as I look at her from across the table.

“Are you okay?” she asks. “I heard you two fighting earlier.”

Leaning forward in my seat, I rest my forearms on the table, saying, “We weren’t fighting, Mom.”

She shakes her head at me and questions, “Well, is everything all right?”

I normally tell my mother everything, but when I found out about Candace, I held it secret. But I feel like I’m in so deep with this girl, and the stuff I’m dealing with is some of the heaviest shit I’ve ever dealt with. I haven’t had anyone to really talk to about it, and knowing how much my mother loves her, I trust her enough to make this confession that I have had locked up inside of me.

“No.” I drop my head when I say this because I already feel the remorse building inside for betraying Candace by telling her secret, but it’s breaking me, and I don’t know where else to turn.

She places her hand over mine as she says, “Talk to me, sweetheart.”

Staring at our hands, I take in a deep breath and begin, “There’s something I’ve never told you about Candace.”

“Okay.”

“Remember the attack I told you about that happened this past summer at the bar?”